Whenever I read Facebook, I always seem to end up reading a post from somebody complaining about anti-social behaviour.

Be it gangs of youths intimidating people, or people being drunk in the street, or things being thrown at folk when they are out and about, it would be easy to read social media and decide just to stay indoors.

Often, I just commiserate with those involved and forget about it. But having seen it talked about so often recently, I decided to dig into police figures and see if anti social behaviour really is such a problem.

Sadly, the answer appears to be: Yes.

According to figures on the police.uk website, which reports crime figures by area, of the near 6,000 crimes reported in the Rossendale and Ramsbottom area last year, 42.96 per cent were anti-social behaviour.

That’s eight anti-social behaviour offences reported every day.

Worryingly, anti-social behaviour offences are going up.

They peaked at over 300 in July alone, before falling to 225 in August.

Most recent figures are yet to be published.

Looking at the crime map, in July – peak anti-social behaviour month – there were 59 offences in Bacup, five in Whitworth, 54 in and around Waterfoot and Newchurch, 46 around Rawtenstall, 29 in Ramsbottom and 64 across Haslingden and Helmshore.

There is, of course, an argument that says anti-social behaviour goes up in the summer when the days are longer and people are out more.

And, of course, there is a logic to that.

But it’s also a logic based on the fact that people somehow can’t behave when it’s sunny, which I find rather sad.

And it would also suggest that whatever action the police take in the knowledge that anti-social behaviour goes up in the summer didn’t work – thus explaining the profileration of sad stories you read on Facebook.

The very real question which needs to be asked of our police is what are they doing about it?

It’s not a problem they are unaware of – in the run-up to the police and crime commissioner elections this spring, incumbent commissioner Clive Grunshaw visited the area to talk about that very problem.

Yet the problems persist.

Is it possible that the fact we no longer have a police station in the centre of our Valley towns is a trigger for further bad behaviour?

After all, if you don’t have police based in the town centres, you don’t have police officers arriving to and going from a police base, walking to shops, or just being around.

Instead, Rossendale now has a string of empty buildings which were once police stations.

I have a lot of sympathy for those officers we have left working in Rossendale. They do a superb job, often with the infrastructure they require to do their job removed.

I also have sympathy for those who manage the police budgets – they have been slashed. But someone, somewhere needs to address the anti-social behaviour problem.

Alongside violent crime and burglaries, anti-social behaviour can be seen as trivial. But it can blight lives if it is left to go on.

And looking at the data, that is what appears to be happening.

Promises needed over unexpected spending

The Empty Homes calamity at Rossendale council continues to eat into council budgets.

Rossendale council was left carrying the financial burden for a project to refurbish some of East Lancashire’s most rundown homes when the company brought in to manage the project went bust last year. The council aims to hand over the properties to a social housing landlord in the coming months.

But there’s no escaping the fact that Rossendale council has become the landlord of last resort for some of the area’s most undesirable homes at a time of great financial pressure for the authority.

In the last three months alone, the cost of managing these homes to the council has gone up by £285k – that’s a huge amount of money for a council of Rossendale’s size to suddenly be liable for.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds on unexpected spending has fallen on to the council as a result of this project – and despite several independent investigations, the council is yet to give assurances about how it will ensure such a thing never happens again.

Councillors, as we know, have been given the all-clear because they weren’t kept informed of developments in the project. But assurances that it can’t happen again still haven’t emerged.

At a time when council services are being cut, errors of this magnitude surely deserve more vocal promises for the future from our local council and its ruling councillors.

More tourists visiting

Good news from Rossendale council this week – it appears that the Valley is becoming more appealing to tourists.

According to council data, in 2015, 1.3m visits took place to Rossendale (presumably the same person can make multiple visits), which was 2pc up on 2014.

The data suggests that tourism is worth £52m to Rossendale’s economy, up 3.2pc year on year.

These feel like very big numbers and I have no idea how they are worked out.

Another stat is that there were 327,000 ‘staying nights’ in Rossendale in 2015 – ie. people staying over in the borough.

For an area with so few hotel rooms, that seems remarkable in one sense.

But in another, it shouldn’t surprise us at all.

I’ve always found the people who shout loudest about this area are the people who live here – and it makes sense therefore that we’d be the ones providing the beds for the people visiting here.

Tourism still feels like an untapped opportunity for Rossendale.

But the data seems to suggest more and more people are finding reasons to visit here, and that is surely a good thing.